1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to a facsimile system and process of storing telephone numbers, and more particularly, relates to a facsimile system capable of scanning a document, recognize characters and telephone numbers written on the document and store recognized characters and telephone numbers automatically in a memory which serves as a telephone directory for subsequent use.
2. Related Art
Conventional facsimile systems available in the market today contain a long list of sophisticated options for the convenience of users. For facsimile systems used primarily in an office environment, one of those convenient service features is to create and maintain a list of telephone numbers and related information of predetermined facsimile transmission sources in a telephone directory for a variety of reasons. One reason is to facilitate automatic dialing of a selected facsimile transmission source based on the telephone numbers contained in the telephone directory. Another reason is to accept an incoming facsimile document only from a particular facsimile transmission source while restricting facsimile communication with other facsimile transmission sources for the purpose of securing its confidential information and avoiding unwanted facsimile transmission, such as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,274,467 for Facsimile Apparatus Capable of Desired Processing Dependent On Terminal Number Of Calling Party issued to Takehiro et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,293,253 for Facsimile Apparatus For Receiving Facsimile Transmission Selectively issued to Kida et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,349,447 for Facsimile Machine issued to Kuwahara et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,379,124 for Facsimile System issued to Ikegaya et al.
The telephone directory includes not only telephone numbers of remote communication systems but also their corresponding names and related information which may be available for a visual display for dialing selection and visual confirmation when a selected telephone number is dialed. Generally, in order to store a telephone number in traditional facsimile system, the user must follow the operation manual to manually input a prescribed key combination representing the input telephone number for storage in internal memory. Another technique such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,249,216 for Facsimile Transceiver Apparatus issued to Kanda, seeks to automatically store a telephone number and related information in internal memory as the number is being dialed by the user. Other technique as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,800,582 for Method And Apparatus For Creating And Storing Telephone Directory Listings issued to D'Agosto, III et al., further allows rapid downloading of previously recorded directory listings of telephone number information from a magnetic recording medium to an internal memory for subsequent use. While contemporary techniques for creating a telephone directory in facsimile systems are noteworthy, it is my observation that a different, yet simpler technique can still be contemplated.